Peter Thiel Is Now Bidding on Gawker.com (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Its official. "Venture capitalist Peter Thiel has made an offer for Gawker," reports Reuters, adding that the potential acquisition "would let him take down stories regarding his personal life that are still available on the website, and remove the scope for further litigation between him and Gawker." It was Thiel's 2016 lawsuit which bankrupted the site, prompting a Washington Post blogger to write that Thiel "killed Gawker once. Now it looks like he may kill it again."

Elsewhere the Washington Post argues the whole episode "highlighted the immense legal risk borne by news outlets already facing a precarious financial reality in the digital age." The Post's blogger describes Thiel as "a billionaire leveraging his wealth to obliterate a media outlet...as part of a personal vendetta."
Last month former Gawker staffers attempted to crowdfund the purchase and relaunch of Gawker.com as a nonprofit media organization. But their 1,496 backers only pledged $89,844, far short of the campaign's $500,000 target.

Comments

Nope.

[aepervius]

"highlighted the immense legal risk borne by news outlets already facing a precarious financial reality in the digital age."
No it highlights that contrary to what shithead blogposter thimk (gawker people are not what I would call journalist or even news) privacy protection DOES exists even in the US and the web is not a free post-it-all-for-money, there are consequences. Gawker be damned they earned their happenstance.

Gawk would not remove pictures of a rape

[Anonymous Coward]

Gawker refused to remove pictures of a woman being raped when asked to. There are limits to free speech: We do not allow revenge porn, we do not allow sites like Gawker which have no respect for people's privacy or feelings. Gawker was the site with a writer who ruined a woman for posting an insensitive but harmless joke on Twitter.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.
 

Re: Maybe...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you don't like him? News flash, the world does not revolve around YOU.

Re:Spin spin spin

[ArchieBunker]

Gawker violated a court order. That was the cause of their downfall. Gawker outed Thiel as a homosexual and claimed the Hogan sex tape was public interest. Meanwhile they claimed viewing photos of Jennifer Lawrence nude was the equivalent of sexual assault. The head of Gawker told a jude he would publish nude photos of a four year old if it was in the public interest. Gawker deserved everything they brought upon themselves.

Re:Maybe...

[GameboyRMH]

If you were paying the ACLU and EFF most of the costs of pursuing specific lawsuits at your request, I'd say they're kind of your lawsuits.

I've got Karma to burn

[rsilvergun]

so here I go again defending Gawker. Gawker did a lot of real journalism and used the muck raking to pay for it. A tradition that's as old as journalism itself. Thiel didn't shut them down because he was outed as gay, he shut them down because they kept reporting on his shady business deals. And their mistake wasn't ignoring the court order. That gets done all the time in their line of work. Their mistake was not realizing that Hogan was backed by Thiel for the express purpose of shutting them down.

What we have here is a pretty scary precedent. We have a billionaire using his money and the legal system to shut down somebody critical of him. If anyone honestly believes that'll end well for us working stiffs then they haven't been paying attention to the last 300 years of labor relations...

Re:I've got Karma to burn

[The Cynical Critic]

Thiel didn't shut them down because he was outed as gay, he shut them down because they kept reporting on his shady business deals.

I see the tin foil hat brigade has arrived... In all seriousness, what really sparked Thiel's animosity towards Gawker was how they outed Thiel when they knew he was working with investors from countries with a less-than-positive view of gay people (Saudi Arabia even has the death sentence for gay people) and did so after Thiel had personally asked Nick Denton to not out him as gay. It's hard to figure out a more legitimate reason for someone to hold a grudge.

However what really killed Gawker was how they not only published something they knew had been filmed in private without the knowledge or permission of all the participants, did so knowing that said unwilling participant had expressed his clear disproval towards publishing the video and when a judge told them to take it down, they flat out refused and posted more articles based on that video.

You may not like this, but the reality is that the freedom of the press is not something that allows the media to do whatever they want and publish whatever they want to publish. All Thiel really did here was level the playing field as Terry Bollea would simply not have been able to afford anything like the kind of legal help Gawker was able to afford on his own after the tapes killed whatever was left of his career.

Gawker the liberal rag

[p51d007]

"Mostly" read by liberals, antifa, BLM, socialist, progressives...ie: the ones that think everything should be FREE...so, it's no wonder they didn't have any people funding a potential "relaunch". They are ok with spending OTHER peoples money, but NOT their own. "Last month former Gawker staffers attempted to crowdfund the purchase and relaunch of Gawker.com as a nonprofit media organization. But their 1,496 backers only pledged $89,844, far short of the campaign's $500,000 target."

Re:Maybe...

[ravenshrike]

Yep, it was, and if Gawker weren't run by complete sociopathic morons who couldn't figure out how to keep their fucking traps shut in the middle of a courtroom the worst that would have happened is a 6-7 figure fine and having to take down and apologize for the Bollea sex tape. But when the people running Gawker do things like proudly declare they would publish child porn as newsworthy, well, they dug their own fucking grave.

You're missing the point

[rsilvergun]

that kind of brazenness is par for the course. The point of these lawsuits is for both parties to get some publicity. That's why 99% of the time they're settled out of court. It's more a less a game with both sides playing. The trouble is Gawker didn't realize Hogan wasn't the one playing, Thiel was, and Thiel wasn't playing the same game, he was out for blood.

Now, I suppose you could make the argument that our legal system shouldn't be used to this, but then again the public at large allows it because they find this kind of public theater intensely amusing; even if you and I find it stupid and wasteful. But again, that's missing the point. Gawker's real mistake was not seeing through Hogan to Thiel in time to save themselves.